


Diplomatic Failure

by ThousandsOfBears



Category: Heart & Slash
Genre: A couple that Fights together stays together, All the robots except Herbie use it/its pronouns, Alternate Universe, Betrayal, But like between robot models, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Carrying, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fuck Canon, Gay Robots, Grief, Heart and Slash can do the fusion thing but it takes a lot of power so they don't, Heart has a disc player in the center of its chest, Heart is a little bastard, Heart is the refurbished prototype and that's why it knew QuAsSy was fishy from the start, Heart sees fighting as a game, How else would they shoot guns??, I think not, Interrogation, Its dead as hell, Just some corpses rattling around after the total annihilation of humanity, Kidnapping, Loss, Memory Loss, Mention of some humans glorifying war, Misunderstandings, Oops! Some humans are alive!, Other, Post-Canon, QuAsSy is only really mentioned and some memories of it are shown, QuAsSyfuckingdies.mp4, Reflection, Robot Racism, Robots, Romantic Fluff, Romantic Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Seperation, Short Chapters, Skeletons, Slash is an old bot, Slash is dramatic, Slash traveled with a group of humans awhile but they eventually died to the Robolution, They don't really realize they're kidnapping a sentient being though, They have hands, They have them I swear, Threatening, With little circles??, oh yeah, robot violence, these bitches gay! good for them good for them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-15 04:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29553507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThousandsOfBears/pseuds/ThousandsOfBears
Summary: Heart and Slash attempt to navigate a post-QuAsSy world while new enemies and unsteady allies shift and change.
Relationships: Heart/Slash





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This alternates between Heart and Slash's perspectives.

It was over. QuAsSy was stranded in space. Gone. The doctor was avenged, and QuAsSy couldn’t grow its pointless army of reprogrammed models. It was over. Slash and Heart were free, and it was overwhelming.

There were… a lot of trees. Heart had never seen so many. The only ones Heart had seen was the one Slash had met with it on and a couple grown inside the parks of the city. Never in this capacity and certainly never in the sheer unplanned natural growth. Heart couldn’t help but think that Slash being on one of the only reclaimed things in the city was some kind of symbolism. Probably something a human would have been able to come up with. Heart found itself surprisingly fond of the idea. That safe zone. No COP units. No scavengers. Just a moment. And Slash, too. Heart wondered if it would have such fondness if Slash hadn't been there.

Further inspecting the area ahead of it, it noticed a path in the rock face. Nudging Slash, it pointed out the oddly made ramp carved into the rock of the cliff and hidden by some sparse brush. “Odd, why would there be a path? I don’t think any robots from the city were ever let out.” Slash commented. “Weren’t you stuck in the factory before I came along?” “It just doesn’t seem like QuAsSy would ever be interested outside of purposes of the Roboloution. Plus it isn’t big enough for anything but a smallbot.” “Ah,” Heart nodded. Heart tugged on its hand and gestured to the ramp. “Shall we?”

Heart and Slash walked down in silence. There was still a lot to take in. They both didn’t know what was ahead of them. Heart kept sneaking glances at Slash. Heart was glad to have it here, but it seemed to be distracted. “What’s up?” Heart asked.”Ah nothing,” Slash responded. “Doesn’t seem like nothing.” “Really, it’s nothing.” Slash insisted.

Heart didn’t believe it. There was obviously something more bothering Slash, but Slash was far too stubborn to push any answers out of. Soon enough, Heart and Slash reached the end of the path. The silence had gotten somewhat suffocating. 

“Hey Heart, look at this.” Snapped out of its thoughts, Heart looked over to where Slash was. A sign had been posted up to the rock wall. It read, _ BEWARE: LT. COL. COPGORE has been defeated. The city is no longer safe haven.  _ It looked to have been there for a long time in the elements. Even with the slight shelter of the cliff, it still seemed to be close to either falling off or disintegrating.

“It looks like a human warning,” Slash murmured. “I thought COPGORE joined QuAsSy after every human was wiped out.” Heart said. “It did.” Heart mulled over this discrepancy. Perhaps the humans put it there right after COPGORE thought there were no humans left. There was also the term ‘defeated’. As far as Heart and Slash knew, COPGORE had only given up to QuAsSy once all the humans were gone.

“Weird…” Heart said after a minute or two of thinking.


	2. Chapter 2

Slash didn’t know what to do. Fighting was familiar, Slash knew how to do it and did it well. A conversation? Not so much. They wanted badly to have something to talk about, but the silence prevailed.

Slash shifted uncomfortably. It wondered if Heart was going to leave. All the other HRT models did. Even the ones that had appeared to be on its side. What made Heart different?

Speaking of Heart, it seemed to be far less solemn than earlier. Humming and walking it looked around. Slash realized it was probably the first time Heart had seen nature in such a scope. It was walking around and investigating everything.

“Oh! Slash!” Slash whipped its head around, startled. Heart was holding a rabbit. Slash relaxed. “You almost made me short my circuits…” Heart giggled “Sorry,” it said not sounding very apologetic. “Look it’s a rabbit!” “Slash glanced at Heart, slightly puzzled. “Is that in your database? Seems like a weird thing for QuAsSy to put in.” Heart’s inner workings clicked thoughtfully. “Mhmm, must’ve had extra room without Memory Module 2. QuAsSy told me it was broken. It might have been the one to break it though. It wouldn’t want the soldier bots to know its creator was dead.”

Slash nodded along. QuAsSy probably didn’t have a hand in messing with the memory; it held its robots to such a high degree of perfection it couldn’t bear to tamper with one. It was weird though, who would tamper with Heart’s memory? QuAsSy had a reason to. Heart might’ve wisened up to QuAsSy pretending to be Dr. Sympathetic had it had its memory. QuAsSy was too dedicated to preserving humanities’ creations, ironically enough, to have messed with something like that though. What else would have a motive to do it? Slash guessed it wouldn’t ever really know.

Speaking of QuAsSy, it was very cathartic to see the Space Elevator in pieces on the forest floor. The ruins of its empire given up to the plants. Not to mention the old-rusted through soldiers of the Roboloution. Former war machines now only grew plants. It gave Slash hope for the future. Maybe it’d grow a couple of plants.

Yeah, that sounded nice.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, fluff

It was a lovely night. The stars were bright, and Heart kept almost walking into trees looking at them. Slash snickered at it and Heart shot it a glare in return. “We can sit down you know. We aren’t on a time limit.”  
Heart considered it. Sure they wanted to put some distance between QuAsSy’s little training course, but they didn’t really have to run. “Yeah ok.” Heart said. Coming upon a clearing, Slash laid down and patted the grass next to it. Heart’s screen brightened slightly and it sat down next to it.  
“Doesn’t compare to the view from up there huh?” Slash commented. “No, it’s way better down here.” Heart said. Slash turned its head towards Heart quizzically. “Why?” Heart hummed. “Well, you’re down here,” Heart said warmly. Slash’s cooling system ran noticeably faster and it chuckled. “Sap.”  
Heart giggled quietly and looked up at the stars again. “There, that’s Orion’s Belt.” Looking where Slash was pointing, Heart picked out the three stars of the belt. “The Greeks made a story about him and the goddess of hunting and the moon.” “Why not make a symbol out of the moon then?” Heart wondered. Slash laughed. “Humans were weird. Part of the charm I suppose.”  
Heart leaned back in thought. Humans seemed odd. Always fighting. Always loving. Seemed rather unstable, though Heart didn’t have much room to talk. Fighting QuAsSy. Loving Slash. It did make sense to share humanity’s quirks and nature. It was made by humans, after all. But, then again, so was QuAsSy. Now that Heart was thinking about it, QuAsSy seemed to have many of humans’ worst traits. Vengeful, self-absorbed, petty. Heart supposed QuAsSy would never have fully escaped human error.  
“What was Dr. Sympathetic like?” “Hah, where to start with him? He was always talking big. He had a dream to see robots making every part of life better. Even war.” Slash momentarily paused, screen dimming. “He glorified it, but he was doing his best.” “Well yeah, I figured,” Heart laughed. “I was designed to be a nanny bot, and I still had extensive combat programming.” “Wait what?” Slash exclaimed, sitting up. “Yeah,” Heart giggled. “Childcare turned elite soldier.” Slash groaned and covered its screen.  
“What? You sulking?” Heart teased. “Wow, wow.” Slash groaned. “I thought he grew for a second there.” Heart laughed and fell back onto the grass.


	4. Chapter 4

It wasn’t long until they came across an intact road. It cut into the forest unnaturally, brash and brazen, it seemed out of place. Slash idly kicked a rock down it. Heart walked alongside it humming a tune. They had eased into a steady silence, having said most of what conversation that was available over the week they had been walking around.  
After a while of walking, they reached a towering statue. Completely made in gold Slash noted, it was lavish with the human depicted proudly puffing its chest out with its hands on its hips.  
Seeing the remnants of humanity was still so odd. Especially seeing it rusted through and grown over. Seeing roads was odd. Seeing signs about long ago laws about speed was odd. Seeing the occasional skeleton is especially odd. Slash supposed seeing the statue was a comfort, seeing a part of humanity unmarred. Slash remembered the elaborate funerals humans would set up. It was sorry it didn’t know enough to replicate those traditions to give one last gift to humanity, but alas, Slash could only carry memories of them to wherever it went. Not enough, but it was all it could do.  
Looking over at Heart, it was kneeling next to a skeleton. It occurred to Slash it was probably the first time it’d seen the remains of a human. “You ok?” Slash asked, sitting next to Heart. “I guess it never really sank in back there. We really are alone, huh?” Heart’s voicebox crackled and flutters of electricity overlaid on its words. “Not entirely,” Slash said, knocking against it. “Not entirely.”


	5. Chapter 5

It was kind of unexpected to see the military outpost. It was old and decrepit, and Slash and Heart debated even going in. “We could use the scrap. Besides, what’s the worse that could happen?” “Hey, don’t jinx it.” Heart laughed. “Superstitious? Thought that was a human thing.” “Gotta have something from them huh?” Heart shrugged.

“No but seriously, I doubt anything will happen.” Heart asserted. Slash sighed heavily. “Yeah ok.” Heart brightened. It was quite loveably overdramatic. 

Catching its hand, Heart tugged it towards the building. Entering the military base, Heart and Slash were greeted with an old dusty machine gun proudly displayed. “Why are they so proud of this?” Heart murmured. “Humans were odd.” Slash shrugged.

Not especially satisfied, Heart looked around. “I suppose we should split up.” Heart remarked reluctantly. “Mhm,” Slash said in a very disagreeable way. “Yeah no,” Heart agreed. “So I guess we should figure where we’re going first.”

Slash shrugged. “Just pick a direction, we don’t know where we’re going.” Heart hummed and moved closer against it, display knocking against Slash. It was pleasant to walk through a building without being constantly attacked. 

Raiding a couple of rooms, Slash and Heart found a decent amount of scrap and fixed up a couple of dents and scratches from fighting QuAsSy. Hearing Slash laughing, Heart looked over and saw it laughing at a C.O.P. smallbot head in a display case. Heart stared dismayed at it. “Why would they do that?” Slash said. “Why would you put a smallbot in a display case???” Heart shook its head. “Humans… I can’t believe they were actually proud of those.” “Well, I can’t believe that we were actually built off of _that_.” Heart groaned. “Don’t remind me. Please. Ever.” Slash chuckled and threw the head over its shoulder not caring as its display case shattered across the floor.

Leaving the room, Heart and Slash rummaged in a few more places but didn’t find much. It seemed that they’d gone through most of what was nearby. Maybe they could go down a level? Or - A crash sounded through the empty base. It echoed around making it hard to discern exactly where it came from. Heart swung its head around . “What was that?”

“I dunno,” Slash said, on edge.”I’ll check it out.” “Someone’s paranoid,” Heart teased. “I’ll check back in the building.” “Be careful,” Slash warned. “Something feels off.” Heart nodded. It teased Slash, but it couldn’t help but agree. The crash seemed too big for a raccoon. Heart had become rather familiar with the antics of raccoons, however. It wouldn't be surprised at this point.

Regardless, Heart split off from Slash and surveyed the rooms branching off of the path they had taken. Most rooms didn’t have a place to hide, and those with hiding places were easily searched. There was a break in the pattern though. The foyer.

The foyer looked like it had been prepared in a hurry, boxes, and bags of old food and supplies piled around the edges of the room. Far too many places to hide in to check easily. Heart understood Slash’s unease.

On alert Heart’s gaze skipped around the room. There was dust disturbed. Everywhere. Something was definitely around here. What, though, was unclear. Heart hesitated in stepping into the room. An open area with bountiful hiding space. It was an ambush zone. Heart’s code threw alert after alert at it every time it even so much as eyed the particularly large box in the corner. Heart considered going back and getting Slash. There was safety in numbers after all.

Heart shook itself out of it. Surely it was just an animal. What else could it even be? A human? Yeah right. Yeah, it was fine. It was fine. It’s fine. Probably. And yet it continued to loiter by the doorway, eyeing the dark corners.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm mad with the power of being in a fandom in which no one will read this.


End file.
